Exploring the Power of MAXDictio:
Word-Based Analysis
Michael C Gizzi ( mgizzi@gmail.com mgizzi@ilstu.edu)
MAXDictio is a quantitative text analysis module that offers tools for word-based
analysis of text and PDF documents:•Analysis of word frequencies and word combinations•Analysis of Keyword-in-context (results tables and Interactive Word Tree)•

Dictionary-based content analysis with a dictionary

Explorations – Word Frequencies
Select MAXDictio > Word Frequencies to count and list words in all (or only inactivated) text and PDF documents. Alternatively, you can restrict the search
to the text currently displayed in the “Retrieved Segments” window.
The result table lists all words in the analyzed text by their absolute andrelative frequencies. The columns “Documents” and “Documents %” indicate
the number and percentage of documents in which a word occurs.

Stop and Go Lists
Stop lists are a place to collect uninteresting words, for example to or and,that you wish to exclude from your analysis. You can send words to the stoplist with a click on the green icon in result tables or open MAXDictio > Stop Listto customize, export, import and merge stop lists.

Differentiate by Document, Document Group or Document Set
Result tables can hold additional columns to display word frequencies for
documents or document groups. Columns can display how often a word occur,
the rank of a word in this document (group) or if the word occurs at all (1, 0).

Base Form (Lemmatization)
Activate the “Reduce Words to Base Form (lemmatization)” option to countwords from the same stem together. For example, the frequency for “give” will
include occurrences of give, gave, or given. Lemmatization is currently available
for 14 languages.

Exploration: Word Combinations
Select MAXDictio > Word Combinations works similar to the Word Frequencies
feature but counts and lists word combinations rather than single word
occurrences. You can search for
combinations of up to 5 words.
You can decide if word
combinations should occur
within the same sentence or ifword combinations should also
be counted across paragraphs
and full stops.

Tip: If you hover with a mouse over a row in the results table, all thelemmatized words or word combinations in this row will be
displayed.

Exploration: Keyword-in-context
Select MAXDictio >Keyword-in-context toview selected keywords
in a tabular view alongwith the words thatappear before and after
the word. The table also
displays document
information.
Tip: This table is interactively linked to the original source data. Click into a table row to highlight thesearch item in the original text in the Document Browser. Each column of a result table can bealphabetically sorted with a click on the column header. You can rearrange columns via drag & drop,and right click on a column header to filter for characters.

Exploration: Interactive Word Tree
Select MAXDictio > Interactive Word Tree to visually explore word and word
combinations in your data). Drag all the documents, document groups or sets
into the dialog window that you want to use to create a Word Tree.
The word “net adds” is the root of the tree with branches to the left and rightshowing the words before and after that word. The root can be placed in themiddle (as shown above) or as the starting or ending point. The window tothe right contains the complete analyzed text. Yellow highlighted passages are
currently displayed in the tree view.

Tip: Click on another word to use it as the new root or search for word (combinations)in the search field.

Word Matrix Browser
The Word Matrix browser lets you produce a table like the code matrix browser,
but instead of showing the distribution of codes in documents, document groups
or document sets, it lets you see how words are used.
Word Matrix browser can use a set of search terms, words in a “go list,” orwords in a dictionary.

If you click on one of the cells, you will see the search results of that word orphrase and can then auto-code it if you want.

Dictionary-based Content Analysis
To conduct a dictionary based quantitative context analysis, your first step isto create a dictionary via MAXDictio > Dictionary. A dictionary may contain any
number of categories with an unlimited number of search items. For example, asimple dictionary may look like this:This dictionary contains categories, like “Finances” or Partnerships”, each ofwhich includes search items. A search item can also consist of multiple words orphrases. As you can see, you can specify if you want whole word, casesensitivity, or starting letters. Like stop-lists, dictionaries can be imported,exported, and merged. By default, dictionaries and stop lists are saved within a
MAXQDA project, to ensure that if you share your project data with your team,
everyone can use them.

Selecting Search Terms
The hard work is in creating a functional dictionary that will capture the terms
you are looking to include. Here you can draw on other MAXDictio tools, suchas Word Combinations, and Word Frequencies to drag words into search terms
in a dictionary.
Use the Analysis > Word Explorer or MAXDictio > Word Matrix browser to first
explore the terms you are thinking of including in a dictionary. Word Explorer
can let you see the usage of words or phrases in documents, groups, word
combinations, context words, and associated codes. It is probably the best place
to “beta test” words to include as dictionary search terms.

Frequencies of Dictionary Categories
Select MAXDictio > Dictionary-based Content Analysis to create a frequency
table similar to the ones we discussed earlier. This time MAXQDA only searches
for search items in active dictionaries.

Visualize Frequencies of Dictionary Categories
Select MAXDictio > Category Matrix Browser to visualize the same type of
frequencies in a visual matrix. The image blow visualizes how often search items
from different categories occur in different fairy tales. You can also start thisfeature by clicking the matrix browser icon in the result table of a quantitative
content analysis.

Like in the code matrix browser, or code relations browser, you can choose toview the results with symbols (circles or squares), numbers, or numbers in aheat map.

Auto-code documents with Dictionary Categories
Select MAXDictio > Auto code with dictionary toautomatically search for occurrences of category
search items. Each search result can be coded with thename of the category, that holds this search item. All
the usual auto code options of MAXQDA are available,
e.g. to code just the search item, or the (adjourning)sentence(s) or paragraph(s) it occurs in.

Reviewing Auto-coded segments in a dictionary-based content
analysis
While dictionary-based auto-coding is powerful, you need to be sure that what
you are coding is relevant, and that it codes all of the relevant segments in yourdocuments. There are multiple ways of doing this:•Manual review of the coded segments in your documents. Read throughthe documents to see if what you coded is comprehensive or evenrelevant. One way to assist in this is to activate the new codes and use
the Document Browser settings to only display activated codedsegments.

•Use the Smart Coding tool to review coded segments. This can be botha check for accuracy, and a powerful tool to do secondary coding. If you
treat the coded categories like themes in a thematic analysis, you can use
smart coding tool to easily add sub-codes. You could also use the Word
Explorer to double check some of categories you coded to determine if
your results appear to be accurate and complete.

•A good workflow for dictionary building might be to begin with Word
Explorer and Word Frequencies/Combinations, and Word Matrix
Browser to develop a dictionary. Test it out by running the Dictionary
Content Analysis and Category Matrix Browser to see if the results seemto be capturing what you are hoping to capture. Then auto-code andreview the results in the document browser and smart coding tool.

•For more information, download a free copy of The Practice ofQualitative Data Analysis With MAXQDA: Research Examples Using
MAXQDA, Volume 2 from MAXQDA-Press. Then read chapter 3,“Using MAXQDA for Dictionary-Based Content Analysis: An
Example Exploring the Business Strategy of Netflix Over Time“For More information contact. Dr. Michael Gizzi,
Certified MAXQDA Trainer

https://www.4stagesofresearch.com mgizzi@ilstu.edu or mgizzi@gmail.com